CCD Factsheet | Combination of early warning system and climate information is key to ensure long-term resilience

The Climate and Development Committee of Coordination SUD (French NGO platform) has released a new factsheet.

[Extract]

Making high-quality weather information available and implementing Early Warning Systems (EWSs) are not new tools when it comes to reducing the risk of disaster. The importance of these tools is highlighted in several international frameworks, in particular in the Rio Declaration on Environment and Development (1992), followed by the Yokohama Strategy on natural disaster prevention (1994), the Hyogo Framework for Action on disaster risk reduction (2005), and more recently the new Sendai Framework. One of the seven targets of the Sendai Framework is to substantially increase the availability of and access to multi-hazard EWSs and disaster risk information and assessments to the people by 2030.

Although progress has been made in recent years, « as urban areas evolve into megacities, people crowd into exposed areas such as flood plains, and climate change increases the frequency and intensity of several types of extreme weather events, the risks to human life and socio-economic assets have become greater than ever »1. The 5th IPCC2 report and the World Bank’s report, Turn Down the Heat3, in addition to others, consistently expose the impact that climate change has on people’s living conditions. The increased variations in precipitation and temperatures, the increase in the frequency and intensity of extreme weather events, and the uncertainty of weather forecasts in terms of time and place are major challenges for those populations that are most at risk and that are dependent on natural resources.

Given that context, the implementation of early warning systems and the access to high-quality climate information that could be used to inform decision-making – is necessary all around the world, but in particular for the most vulnerable and the poorest –to ensure populations’ longterm resilience.

All stakeholders involved in development (communities, governments, national and local partners, NGOs, private actors) must seize upon this topic in order to strengthen the sustainability of their actions and to allow the decision-making and planning systems set up thus far to evolve.